Growing our Own Food on the Front Lawn 2017

“The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small-scale, in our own gardens. If only 10 percent of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.”

~Bill Mollison, Founder of Permaculture

Growing Urban

Our front lawn. 9 feet by 40 feet. Soon to be a vegetable garden and a Sensory Garden

How much produce can 360 square feet yield?

Can this feed a family of 5 for an entire 22 week growing season and beyond?

Can growing our own save us money or even make money?

A Garden Starts with Seeds (January 28, 2017)

Planning this year’s garden brings a smile to my face. I loved growing food last year but I didn’t really have a plan. Last year was an experiment to see what would grow and where (in the different microclimates around the house) and what we actually used. I now know that we will use a lot of tomatoes, kale, lettuce, spinach, sorrel, carrots, cucumber, borage (both the fuzzy leaves and the beautiful edible flowers), pumpkins, summer and winter squashes and zucchini. Fresh herbs are essential in our kitchen and this year I am trying a growing them using ‘hugelkultur‘, which is growing food on a mound or what I call ‘herb hill’. Basil, oregano, verbena, thyme, marjoram, flat leaf parsley, cilantro, dill and lemon balm are some of my favorites.

Dazzling purple borage flowers and sunflowers in our garden last year. Borage refills with nectar every 2 minutes, no wonder the bees were all over it. Photograph by Jane Grueber Copyright 2016

Although I saved many seeds or shook dry seeds directly back into our already existing garden beds, I ordered some new Heritage seeds for our front yard urban garden project. My goal is to save seeds that grow well in our climate.

Heritage Seeds

(vegetables & herbs)

Hopi Red Dye Amaranth – this ancient grain grows well in pots and dried seeds can be easily ground into flour

Calabrese Broccoli

Chieftan Savoy Cabbage

Scarlet Nantes Carrots

Beit Alpha Cucumber

Lacinato Kale

Crisp Mint Lettuce

Black Hungarian Peppers

California Wonder Peppers

Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach

Yokohama Squash

Ronde de Nice Squash

Golden Zucchini

Sensory Garden

The benefits of ‘sensory gardens’ are well documented and widely written about. They provide calming sanctuary for those suffering from traumatic brain injury, mental health challenges, developmental difficulties, or neurodegenerative diseases to name a few. For the young and young at heart, they provide a welcoming environment for exploration, learning and communing with nature right in the yard.

I want to make a ‘sensory garden’ in our front yard where we can sit and enjoy the power of nature – to take in the smells, sights and sounds of flowers and birds as well as to provide food for our friendly neighbourhood pollinators. I intentionally chose flowers that support the local ecosystem.

Here are the seed names (shown above from left to right) slated for our sensory garden:

Nastrurtium

Celosia

Coleus

Saphyr blue flax

Morning Glory

Ladybird Poppy

Pandora Poppy

Kong sunflower

Sweat peas

Gaillardia

Indigo Blue Forget-Me-Not

Foxgloves

Hollyhocks

Chinese Lantern

Mason bee gussying up to some borage. Photograph by Jane Grueber Copyright 2016

This is a list of some of the plants and flowers that bees love and you may want to incorporate into your garden this year:

This book explains optimal techniques for growing a great garden with concision. It details what companion planting is, why you may want to do it and is specifically designed to help gardeners ‘mix and match’ various companion plant pairs and groups to create healthy, harmonious botanical communities that are independent from the need for chemicals or pesticides.

Starting a Few Seeds (March 5, 2017)

Over the weekend, we started several seeds indoors so that they are ready to go into the raised garden beds come late April.

With six 8 foot by 4 foot garden beds to fill, we decided to start quite a few plants now. We will start more in about 3 weeks in order to stretch the yield over a longer period of time. Last year, I put everything in at once and felt the consequences of feast and famine.

6 Peas

6 Beans/Legumes

Tendergreen Bush Beans – great flavour and large yield

Bush Beans – early starters

April 2017

My wonderful husband built the six 4′ by 8′ garden beds.

It took a lot of compost and dirt to fill the beds. Thankfully, we started collecting ‘yard waste’ and composting last fall when the idea of an urban garden began to develop in our minds. We thought, let’s pile this ‘waste’ just in case we need it for some reason.

May 2017

We happily harvested Cherry Belle Radishes and some early strawberries near the end of May. The kids were very excited to unleash earth-friendly pest control (a.k.a. Ladybugs).

June 2017

The harvest continued with salads, spinach, nasturtiums, radishes and all kinds of culinary herbs. I make good use of thyme, oregano, basil, dill and cilantro. I love a simple salad with various greens, strawberries, cashews, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, maple syrup and dill.

July 2017

As much as I wanted to have a large cucumber and squash crop, none of the blooms ever turned into fruit. We had an abundance of cauliflower and broccoli…next time around, I will seed way more than I did. Twelve cauliflowers were used up in a flash at our house and some of them bolted right to seed. In late-July, right when things were in full splendor, we sold our house and bought a small acreage in a rural part of central Vancouver Island. It was at this time that I pulled out all of the herbs and berry bushes and placed them in temporary pots.

August 2017

We unceremoniously ripped out our 35 tomato plants and placed all herbs and berry bushes in the utility trailer to transport them to their new home. We shoveled all that wonderful decomposed hugulkultur dirt and compost and took the raised garden bed frames with us as well. I was very thankful that the new owners allowed us to take all our gardening supplies and plants with us.

Once again the tiny seed floats upon the cool autumn breeze, beyond the horizon -fearless of the unknown, trusting the wise winds to carry it where ever they will – and so the journey begins once more….